


Epicentre

by Moonloon (maryavatar)



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-12
Updated: 2011-08-12
Packaged: 2017-10-22 13:16:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maryavatar/pseuds/Moonloon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic will only tolerate being subdued for so long before there are consequences - dire ones. Merlin shelters Arthur through it, but only Arthur can pick up the pieces in the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Epicentre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rivestra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivestra/gifts).



"Merlin!" Arthur yelled, for the fourth time that morning. Merlin had been in an odd mood for the last week, and now he'd started disappearing every time Arthur turned his back. This time he'd tracked him as far as one of the grain sheds.

There was a crash from a barley bin near the back. "What?"

Arthur held his temper and reminded himself that Merlin's entertainment value and loyalty were worth more than any other manservant's efficiency. "I think you mean 'yes, Sire, how may I serve you?'"

Arthur grinned at the silent pause from the back of the shed, which seemed to scream 'I'm considering just how rude I can be about that statement without being thrown in the stocks.'

"Sorry – I just had to... um... check something for Gaius." Merlin said.

Arthur lost his grin. An obvious lie like that was code for 'I'm doing something you absolutely don't want to know about. Don't ask any questions, because the truth would mean you have to choose between me and your father, and I think you'll probably pick your father.'

"How important is it?" Arthur asked.

Merlin stumbled into view, a light dusting of chaff in his hair. "Not as important as following you around so I can stand, unmoving, for hours, in the audience hall, in case you want a drink or a softer cushion. Your Highness."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "Fine. Take the day off. After you've sent one of the pages up to stand around doing nothing."

"I might need tomorrow, too." Merlin said, shaking dust out of his hair and sneezing.

"I'm going hunting tomorrow. And you're coming with me." Arthur said, folding his arms and trying to look like his father. Oddly enough, Merlin seemed cheered by the news of a day spent trying to walk quietly through the woods while carrying half his body weight in weapons and supplies.

"That's great! You'll be out of the castle," Merlin said. "Um, I mean, I'll be a nice break from... things in the castle. Err..."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "Yes, fine, sunrise tomorrow, Merlin."

* * *

The bells ringing out Terce had long since faded when Arthur finally tracked down Merlin the next morning. Arthur stood in the doorway and gaped at Merlin, balancing on the back of Uther's throne, and reaching for something that wasn't there.

Arthur managed to get as far as "Merlin, what on Earth…" before Merlin tumbled off the back of the throne and hit the floor.

"Augh! Dammit. Ow!" Merlin yelled, curling into a ball.

Arthur ran over, torn between amusement and concern. "Merlin, are you all right?"

"Ugh, yes. Mostly. Ow." Merlin hauled himself to his feet and shook his arms and legs. "Yes, no permanent damage."

"Other than what was already damaged, you mean." Arthur said. "Like your brain. Why were you standing on the back of my father's throne?"

"Uh, there was a... cobweb." Merlin said. "And didn’t you want to go hunting today? We'd better get going, hadn't we?"

Arthur peered up at the ceiling. There did seem to be something shimmering in the shadows above the throne, but it didn't look much like a cobweb. "Shouldn't you...?"

"It'll keep," Merlin said, grabbing Arthur's arm and towing him out of the room. "I hope."

* * *

The hunting was terrible. The woods seemed to be completely empty of life. After an hour of walking through completely silent woods, Arthur threw his crossbow to Merlin in disgust. Of course, Merlin hadn't been paying attention, and the crossbow hit him on chin.

"Ow!" Merlin glared at Arthur, which cheered him up more than it should.

"I'm not going to catch anything. But if we go back to the castle now, someone will find something for us to do." Arthur said, a grin spreading across his face.

Merlin perked up. "Find a sunny patch and nap?"

"Or a river for a swim?" Arthur added.

Merlin made a face. "It's not warm enough. Bathing in cold water is bad for you."

That decided it, swimming it was. "Nonsense! A nice bracing dip will do you the world of good. Might make you smell better too."

* * *

Arthur almost had second thoughts when he stepped into the river – its source was in the mountains to the north, and the water was freezing. Normally he went swimming downstream, after the warm water from the rivers which wound their way across the southern plains fed into it. He stopped knee deep, about to turn around and climb back out when Merlin slipped on some mud and fell full length into the water.

By the time Arthur had stopped laughing, the water didn't feel so cold, and it felt great to splash about in the water with Merlin, who shed all the clumsiness he displayed on land.

"Merlin, you're like a bloody otter in the water," Arthur said, as Merlin swam circles around him. Arthur reached out a hand and grabbed Merlin's ankle. "Ha!"

Merlin's head popped up and he gave a gaspy giggle. "Sleek lines. No extra bulk."

Well, that deserved a dunking, which Arthur administered with all the sober dignity the situation called for. Once the death threats and giggling wore off, Arthur pulled Merlin into the middle of the river, where the deeper water swirled around them and the bottom was all soft silt. The mix of the cold water and Merlin's warm skin gave him a little burst of happiness, and he wrapped himself around Merlin a little tighter, his chest to Merlin's back.

"I'm glad the hunting was rubbish," Arthur said, resting his chin on Merlin's shoulder. "This is much better."

Merlin made a small agreeable noise and relaxed into Arthur's arms, letting his own limbs float in the water.

Arthur turned his head a little and pressed his face into the soft skin behind Merlin's ear, and everything went from relaxed to... not relaxed very quickly.

"Arthur?" Merlin asked.

"Can I? Just a bit? I really want to." Arthur ran his hands down Merlin's stomach, stopping just before he touched anything Merlin might not want to share.

Merlin was quiet for a long horrible moment, then took a deep breath. "Not... in the water."

Arthur grinned, relief and excitement making him giddy. "Warm sunny patch?"

"Oh yes," Merlin said, wading quickly for shore.

Arthur followed, keeping an eye out for promising grassy spots.

And then the world ripped itself apart.

* * *

Arthur woke up naked, but wrapped in a blanket. It was dark, he could hear a fire crackling somewhere to his left, and the faint sounds of someone crying and trying to be quiet about it.

"Merlin?" Arthur's voice sounded strange to his ears. Muffled, like the time he'd had a bad blow to the head during a joust and his ears had filled with blood. Arthur sat up, and looked around. He was in clearing, surrounded by the biggest oak trees he'd ever seen. The firelight seemed to lick up the huge trunks, but wouldn't go any further – everything outside the trees was black.

Merlin was sitting on the other side of the fire, his head bowed and his shoulders shaking.

"Merlin, what's wrong?" Arthur asked. He tried to remember what happened at the river, but all he could recall was following Merlin out of the river and then... something wrong... Arthur growled and rubbed his head. "What happened? And why can't I remember?"

"The magic broke free. I tried to stop it, but I wasn't enough. It burst through the skin of the world, and it took everything else with it." Merlin wiped his eyes and looked up at Arthur. At first Arthur thought it was the fire reflected in his eyes, but after a moment he realised. Magic. Right there in Merlin's eyes.

"Merlin, you can't... show me that. I never wanted to..." Arthur turned his face away.

"It doesn't matter now." Merlin bowed his head again. "You don't understand because you've got no magic. What happened was raw magic exploding through everything. You couldn't see the magic, so it didn't make sense, and your mind just... stopped."

"But Merlin, I don't..."

Merlin held up his hand and muttered something, and everything went back.

* * *

Waking up a second time, Arthur found himself blinking in red-tinged sunlight. He could see through the trees circling the clearing, and the view made no sense. To the south, the direction of Camelot, there was a wall of smashed trees and earth, fifty feet high. The wall carried on around the oaks trailing off into a swathe of destruction which carried on to the north as far as he could see.

Merlin was slumped by the remains of the fire, his face still blotchy and swollen. Arthur reached out a hand to wake him, then thought better of it. He found his clothes and walked through the oaks. The mess of splintered wood and earth was tightly packed and stopped hard against the outer edge of the trees.

"Sacred grove."

Arthur jumped and turned around. Merlin was standing behind him, his eyes blue again, but shadowed and blank with shock.

"The Old Religion." Merlin said, waving at the grove.

Arthur looked around. That would explain why the trees were so old. "I thought the Romans cut all the sacred groves down?"

"They missed a few." Merlin turned around and walked back towards the fire. "I've got some supplies stored here. I had a few places like this ready. I'm not too keen on the Old Religion, but we were too far away for anything else." Merlin's voice had an odd flat quality, like all the life had gone out of him.

Arthur followed and fed a few twigs into the remains of the fire, trying to revive it, as Merlin pulled some dried meat and a small cheese out of a sack. He took the food, and watched as Merlin stared at the meat, like he didn't even know what it was.

"Merlin," Arthur said gently. "Start at the beginning."

* * *

"It started in the spring – at first it was just the occasional tickle against my skin, and something like a barely-heard sound late at night. I asked Gaius to help me. I read until my eyes hurt every day, but we didn't find anything. And the pressure got stronger every day.

"Then I heard from the Druids." Merlin looked up. "Do you remember the Druid boy you saved?"

Arthur nodded.

"He could speak to me without talking – the words just showed up in my head. I remember exactly what he said. _'The Magic will not be suppressed. Can't you feel it? Can't you feel it building up under you like an infection? It's going to burst open right under Camelot and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.'"_

Merlin gestured to the destruction around them. "He was right. I found a book, about a month ago. I copied some if it." He thrust a crumpled handful of pages at Arthur. Arthur flattened them out and tried to make sense of them. Most were incomprehensible, but one passage stood out:

>   
> 
> 
> **The Balance of Magic**
> 
> See magic as fluid. See the use of magic by its practitioners as the movement of the tides. Areas with few people are the rocky shorelines, areas with many people are the deep seas. It is imperative that the magic flows through these populations, otherwise it stagnates and becomes foul, as does standing water. Nature will not tolerate this festering of itself, and will expel the noxious part, forcefully.
> 
> The purging of the fouled magic normally results in the obliteration of whatever non-magical community has risen in that place. The Druidic religion foretells a day when man so rejects magic that the resultant purging will rid the world of too large a portion of the magic and magic will cease to be more than a minor power.

Arthur stared down at the paper. Understanding dawned in him. "The magic exploded? Under Camelot?"

Merlin nodded. "I started seeing the cracks in the skin of the world about a week ago. They would just hover in the air and no one else saw them. If I sent a little spell into them, they'd go away for a while, but they always came back, and every day there were more. I couldn't keep up, so I found all the magic places around Camelot, and put protection around them and left food and supplies there, and I warned Gaius, and I should have... there should have been more time... I..." Merlin stared at Arthur. "I'm sorry."

Arthur got up and walked away.

* * *

From high ground it was obvious that something had pushed everything in its way from Camelot outwards. The grove was like a stone in a stream, the debris piled up at the side nearest Camelot, and tapering off into a teardrop shape pointing away. Arthur perched on the top of the debris at the edge of the grove and tried to understand the scope of what had happened. He kept waiting for tears or anger, but it was all too big to get to grips with. The big picture wasn't helping, he needed to see things in small manageable pieces.

* * *

Merlin was still where he'd left him. "Right, get off your arse and pack everything up. We're going back to Camelot."

Merlin flinched. "There's no Camelot left."

"So you say, but pardon me for not trusting someone who ends up in the stocks for incompetence twice a week." Arthur tugged on Merlin's arm. "Up. Come on. This wafting about like a consumptive girl is not helping. Pack up the food and the blankets, we're leaving."

Merlin tugged his arm out of Arthur's grasp. "Fine, no need to be an arse about it."

Arthur silently cheered as some life came back to Merlin's face. "If we survived, other people may have survived. And there are places in Albion stuffed full of magic users – all this..." Arthur waved at the mess around them, "... probably peters out before it gets even close to any of the borders."

"I hope my Mum is all right," Merlin said, glancing guiltily at Arthur. Which was when it really hit Arthur that his father might not be all right.

"We'll go to Ealdor after Camelot." Arthur promised.

* * *

They travelled two miles the first day. As the sun started to go down, Arthur gave up on finding anything like a camp site and settled for kicking a space clear under a fallen tree and curling himself and Merlin up in a blanket out of the chill evening air.

"It's going to take days to get back." Merlin said, his voice muffled in the blanket.

"Should be faster when we clear what's left of the forest." Which would probably be another three or four miles, Arthur guessed.

Merlin wriggled. "I think I have a splinter in my hand." One thin pale arm poked out of the blanket. "I tried getting it out with magic, but the magic is hardly there. I think the Druid prophesy was right – all the magic has drained away from here."

Arthur didn't know what to think about that, so he reached for Merlin's hand instead. He could feel the scrapes from clambering over debris, and just below his thumb, on the fleshy pad of Merlin's hand he felt a rougher patch that was a little warmer than the surrounding skin. Merlin hissed as Arthur touched it.

"Don't be such a girl." Arthur said, and brought Merlin's hand up to his mouth. "Now hold still."

Merlin's hand tasted of pine sap and sweat, and once he started sucking at the place where the splinter was embedded Arthur could also taste traces of blood and the leather straps of the pack Merlin had been carrying. The splinter rose up out of the skin slowly, and Arthur was very aware of how close he and Merlin were lying, and how warm Merlin's hand was, and how much he really wanted to bury himself in something physical so he didn't have to think about anything.

The splinter came free and Arthur spat it out. "I've been stuck with bigger pins when I get new clothes."

"Um..." Merlin's voice was shaky. Arthur felt Merlin reaching up and wrapping his warm hand around the back of his neck. "I... can we..."

"Oh God, yes. Please," Arthur groaned, and pressed his mouth to Merlin's.

* * *

It felt like they were the only living things left in the world. A tiny pocket of heat and sweat and life, surrounded by death.

* * *

When Arthur woke up, the first thing he saw was a rabbit hopping through the fallen branches beside them. He nudged Merlin awake and they both stared at the rabbit until it disappeared into the morning mist. Arthur laughed and it seemed to trigger a dozen small noises all around them: two birds took off in flight, squawking their displeasure, and another rabbit shot off in the same direction as the last one.

Arthur rolled over and pinned Merlin to the ground. "They didn't have a sacred grove and magic to save them. Other things will have survived." Then he kissed Merlin's soft red mouth and made them both feel alive. Again.

* * *

They reached the edge of the forest just before sunset that night. The tumbled down trees ended, and torn turf took its place. Arthur kicked at the ground and found a lump of earth with a perfectly straight row of carrots embedded through it.

"Carrots." Arthur said, and sat down abruptly. Maybe an entire forest of trees had been too big to comprehend, but this small piece of someone's garden was like a kick in the gut. "Someone planted these. They sowed the seeds, and made sure there was enough water, and stopped weeds from strangling them and now..."

"And now we're going to eat them." Merlin said, picking them up and rubbing the earth off on his trousers. "Cheese and dried meat will only keep you going for so long. If you don't eat anything else your teeth fall out." He tossed the pack down and rummaged in it, eventually pulling out a battered tin pot. "See if you can find more, I'm going to make soup."

Arthur was fairly sure his laughter had an edge of hysteria, but he walked around the camp, kicking over mounds of earth until he'd found a respectable collection of carrots and onions, and the smashed remains of a turnip. Somehow Merlin managed to turn them, and some of the dried meat, into a thick soup. It didn't taste like much, but it was warm and filling, and grumbling about Merlin's mediocre cooking was comforting.

* * *

Arthur noticed the smell first. They'd been making good time, despite Merlin stopping every half an hour to collect vegetables. Taking his bearings from the mountains behind them, Arthur estimated they'd reach Camelot in a day and a half. He just hadn't realised they were passing through what had once been a small market town until he tripped over what was left of a wooden gate. As he stood up and brushed himself off, he could just see the shape of the market square, and that's when the wind changed and brought the smell of dead things.

"Oh God," Arthur said.

"What?" Merlin asked. Then, "oh," as the smell reached him.

"We should find whatever that is, and bury them," Arthur said.

"We rode through here on our way to the forest." Merlin said. "It was market day. There were over a hundred people here."

"And twice as many cows and pigs. It might not be..." Arthur gagged, and tried not to think about it.

Arthur felt Merlin's warm hands, one on the back of his neck, and the other rubbing his back. "It might not all be… people. But some of it will be..." Merlin's voice trailed off.

"... and we would be here for days if we stayed to bury them all," Arthur finished.

They skirted the edges of the town, discernable only by the jumble of stones and fences mixed in with the broken earth and pieces of torn flesh. Merlin stopped once to be sick.

Arthur stopped twice.

* * *

Arthur grinned up at the Summer Stones. He remembered playing with Morgana around them when he was a child. Until his father had overheard someone call them the Witching Stones and he was forbidden to visit them again. The stones had survived. The grass around the stones had survived, for a half a mile all around them. And the tiny cluster of houses and their inhabitants who were currently plying them with overly sweet mead and oatcakes had survived.

Merlin put his hand on Arthur's arm. "This wasn't one of my places. I didn't put any protection here – the magic was older than the Old Religion, and I didn't really understand it."

Arthur wrapped his hand around Merlin's. "There will be more places like this."

* * *

Camelot had a lot of trees around it, but they were almost all gone now. Not just toppled and blown about like the forest – the trees around Camelot had been blasted into dust. Apart from one bright patch of green.

"One of your safe places?" Arthur asked.

Merlin nodded.

"We should check if there are any survivors first, and collect the supplies you left there."

"That's a lot of supplies, Arthur – it was closest to the castle, so I put as much of the winter stores as I could out there. We won't be able to carry it all."

"We could camp there, and then..." Arthur waved at the jumble of rock that used to be his home. "If no one is alive, we go back to the summer stones and start from there."

"Start what?" Merlin asked.

Arthur smiled and wrapped an arm around Merlin's shoulders. "Rebuilding my kingdom, you idiot."

The End

**Author's Note:**

> So... I could have written another 4,000 words, but this feels like a natural end. I will leave it up to your imaginations whether Merlin and Arthur will find Gaius and Gwen and Leon and various others in Merlin's safe place, or under the castle in Kilgharrah's Cave, or in widely spread bits.


End file.
